The Romance of Zion Chapel | Page 2

street,--
"Il pleure dans mon coeur Comme il pleut sur la ville."
Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New
Zion. Actually.
Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles of
Greece!
CHAPTER II
INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL
That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light
in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus
Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make
in the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester at
large.
Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so
like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for,

that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for
purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its
reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the
more suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps
rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say
one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he
professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that
(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by night,
and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence to
solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual
pastor, the young father of his flock.
Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of
Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct
relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of
Rome,--though he sometimes looked wistfully towards the
latter,--Theophilus Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly
condition, would have found no place to be himself in. His was an
organism that could not long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It
was the non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of
Nonconformity that gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first
few breaths, of a personal force that claimed operation in some human
employment, some work not made with hands, but into which also
entered the spirit of man, and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of
family wealth or influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art
or Nonconformity. To art in the usual sense of the word he was not
called, but to the art of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and
for this Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his
opportunity.
This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no
remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was
not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher
with a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a
failure all in one.
I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to

be a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of
blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting quality,--a
quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand of strength or
opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made himself learned,
that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he was conscious
of a very near communion with the Divine--were qualifications that
alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, apart from their own
restricted exercise in the circle of his own little "cause" and the other
causes for which, in the technical phrase, he would occasionally
"supply," they had passed into his son, and met in him other more
energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love of laughter,
and a mighty humanity.
Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape
and partly something bigger and more effectively vital.
At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said
to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a
big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor at
New Zion.
This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not attempt
to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of Christian
dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he could have
told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the point as
unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in terms
of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He would,
no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but that
pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, he
chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and
humanising all he used; and never for